TEPCO unprepared for the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi: a continuing story

The nuclear industry is constantly reassuring the public that its reactors are safe. But, as the nuclear disaster in Japan continues to unfold, the evidence mounts that these assurances frequently can’t be trusted at all and that in Japan in particular, the nuclear industry and the government have failed in their duty to protect the Japanese people.

In July 2007, the Chūetsu offshore earthquake shut down TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in western Japan. The quake turned over containers of nuclear waste, causing a release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Radioactive water leaked inside several of the reactor buildings, some of it reaching the Sea of Japan.

So we see that TEPCO has a long history of being wholly unprepared for emergencies and ignoring safety concerns. Not only that, Japan’s nuclear watchdogs have failed time and time again to ensure that TEPCO lived up to rigorous and vital safety standards. And now media are reporting evidence of government organisations that should be regulating the nuclear industry attempting to manipulate public opinion in its favour.

Even worse, ‘there are no legal requirements to re-evaluate site related (safety) features periodically,’ as the Japanese government told the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2008. In October this year, a report showed that TEPCO had known since 2008 that the Fukushima Daiichi plant was vulnerable to a tsunami but hid the findings and did nothing to improve the plant’s defences or emergency planning. They weren’t legally obliged to..

The catastrophic safety failures at Fukushima are a direct result of cost and corner cutting by TEPCO and disgraceful failure to regulate effectively by the government. It’s symbolic of the systematic failures of the nuclear industry and governments worldwide to ensure proper safety levels are strictly followed. Given the scale of destruction a nuclear disaster presents what we have seen in Japan is a shameful failure of leadership, accountability and respect for the lives of others.

We must never forget that while TEPCO and the government enjoyed its cosy relationship and ignored safety warnings. Given the siting of the Fukushima plant in a fault zone, thedisaster that has devastated the lives of thousands of people was inevitable. Japan will be living with the terrible consequences of this deceit for a very long time.